gwt-initials-avatars

This project has several utilities for generating initials avatars inspired in Gmail Android App.

It includes a Servlet that can generate random initials avatars from URLs of this form http://localhost:8080/iniavatars/100x100/blisset for get a PNG avatar of 100px with a "B".

Also it includes a GWT library to do the same thing in client side and for composite several avatars in one.

This project was generated with Maven archetypes for modular GWT projects

Use SuperDevMode

Change directory to your generated project and issue the following commands:

1. mvn clean install -Dgwt.draftCompile
2. In one terminal window: cd *-client && mvn process-classes gwt:run-codeserver -Ddev
3. In another terminal window: mvn tomcat7:run -Ddev

The same is available with tomcat6 instead of tomcat7.

Or if you'd rather use Jetty than Tomcat, use cd *-server && mvn jetty:start -Ddev instead of mvn tomcat7:run.

Note that you only need to install once so that gwt:run-codeserver and jetty:start can find the other modules. This is currently needed because neither gwt:run nor jetty:start support running in reactor builds, contrary to tomcat7:run.

The -Dgwt.draftCompile in the first step is not required, it's only to speed up the GWT compilation by disabling optimizations.

Start the development mode

This is similar to using SuperDevMode, except you can use -Dgwt.compiler.skip instead of -Dgwt.draftCompile to speed up the first step (it only has to be done once though so it's probably no big deal), and more importantly you'll use mvn gwt:run instead of mvn process-classes gwt:run-codeserver (process-classes is only needed because of a bug in the gwt-maven-plugin up until version 2.6.0).

Steps therefore become:

1. mvn clean install -Dgwt.compiler.skip
2. In one terminal window: cd *-client && mvn gwt:run -Ddev
3. In another terminal window: mvn tomcat7:run -Ddev

Profiles

There's a special profile defined in the POM file of client and server modules: dev, which is used only when developping. It configures the Tomcat and Jetty plugins and speeds up development with gwt:run-codeserver, gwt:run and jetty:start by not requiring a restart when a change to the ${rootArtifactId}-shared is made.

To activate the dev profile you can provide the -Ddev system property, or use -Pdev.

Productivity tips

When working on the server-side code exclusively, you don't need GWT's DevMode. You can then compile the GWT app using mvn package or mvn package -Dgwt.draftCompile and then mvn tomcat7:run or cd *-server && mvn jetty:start -Ddev. The webapp will be redeployed automatically when you change a class (either compiled by your IDE, or by mvn compile) in either the ${rootArtifactId}-server or ${rootArtifactId}-shared module (be careful though when changing classes in shared that you do not break the GWT client code, particularly when using GWT-RPC).

When working on the client-side code exclusively, to quickly test it in a browser in production mode, use mvn package -Dgwt.draftCompile. You can use mvn package -Dgwt.draftCompile -pl :${rootArtifactId}-client -am while the Tomcat or Jetty server is running (launched by mvn tomcat7:run or cd *-server && mvn jetty:start -Ddev), and then simply hit F5 in your browser.